The Disappearance of Four Two Lima
Small plane carrying three golf instructors, including Davis Love, Jr., father of Davis Love III, crashes after getting lost in the fog.
The PGA TOUR is at the Sea Island Golf Club in St. Simons Island, GA, this week for the RSM Classic. The RSM was first played in 2010, before the era we cover, so the link we’ve chosen is for an iconic family closely associated with Sea Island, and the tragedy that struck the family in 1988. Scroll down to learn more.
Congratulations to Adam Schenk who won his first PGA TOUR title at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship last week. It was a wild week of high winds, punch shots, and one-handed putting. We’ve got some of the highlights in the Clips I Loved.
The Bonus Story explores the teaching philosophy of Davis Love, Jr., while the Tour Backspin Golf Club Bonus Story (behind the paywall) explores his playing career.
Be sure to check out the WHAT HOLE IS IT? this week, it’s a beautiful hole, if you know it, enter your answer, you might win the random drawing and score some golf credit from the Tour Backspin Golf Shop.
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This week’s Tour Backspin Poll aims to find your sweet spot when it comes to the length of time for an 18-hole round of golf. How much do you know about Sea Island in Georgia? We think you’ll be stumped on the Sea Island trivia question in the Tour Backspin Quiz.
This week’s Vintage Ad touts the promise of Gore-Tex fabrics. (below the paywall). Scroll down to view.
We’ve also have a fun challenge for members of the Tour Backspin Golf Club behind the paywall.
The Tour Backspin Poll
We wondered in last week’s Tour Backspin Poll how you cope with the colder temps encountered in winter golf. There were 44% of respondents who rely on layers, layers, layers, while 33% utilize long underwear, and 22% need nothing more than hand warmers.
What is your sweet spot for the length of time needed to play 18 holes? This question stems from an item in last week’s Tour Backspin Golf Club Clips I Love about the public shaming of slow play culprits at Sleepy Hollow. What I noticed were the comments under the post along the lines of “what’s the rush? I’m out with buddies, having a few brews, and listening to music. I like to take may time and enjoy it.” This attitude fails to recognize the impact that one slow group can have on the whole field. Those with this view have one concept for a round’s length while others may have a totally different concept. So, what’s your sweet spot as far as how much time a round of golf should take? Let us know in this week’s Tour Backspin Poll.
Readers of Tour Backspin have voted on the Tour Backspin Reader’s Awards for the Best Equipment Company, the Best Major, Player of The Year, Best Golf Movie or Streaming Show, Biggest Breakout Star, and Biggest Rake Step on the PGA TOUR. We will honor the winners in our Christmas Day issue of The Tour Backspin. Watch for it.
“My God, Did We Need To Do This?”
It is Sunday, November 13th, 1988, a sleepy fall Sunday on St. Simons Island, GA. The perfect day for an afternoon filled with football, relaxation, and the comforts of a routine end to the weekend. Except for Davis Love III, and his wife Robin, who arose early that morning to catch an early flight to Maui.
Love’s performance in 1987 and 1988 earned him an invitation to the unofficial Kapalua International held at the Kapalua Bay Course on Maui. Davis and Robin had dropped their six-month-old daughter, Lexie, with Davis’ mother, Penta, and the two looked forward to some alone time in an island paradise.
Back on St. Simons Island, the morning fog had burned off, and the temperatures rose to the mid-70s. Davis Love, Jr., the father of Davis Love III, and one of the most well-known golf instructors in the nation, settled in to watch some football on television. The elder Love was the former head pro at the Atlanta Country Club before becoming the lead instructor at the Sea Island Resort.
When his wife of 26 years, Penta, wanted to get some range work in at the resort course, her husband went along for the ride. He would be leaving later that night for the annual meeting of the Golf Digest School in Tampa, FL. Joining him on the trip would be fellow Sea Island instructors John Popa and Jimmy Hodges.
Popa was the head pro at Sea Island while Hodges was a protégé of the elder Love and, with the father’s blessing, worked with Davis Love III on his golf swing. If there were any disagreement on a lesson point between father and son, it would be Hodges who would step in and mediate. Hodges was also Love III’s best friend, and the two shared a passion for hunting and fishing.
The Golf Digest School used Sea Island as a hub, and Popa often worked with the school’s director, Andy Nusbaum. Popa was exceptionally talented in teaching junior golfers.
“We worked closely on developing a learning center at Sea Island,” Nusbaum told Bill Fields for an article that ran in a 2008 issue of Golf World. “He was such an easygoing, good guy to work with, organized, anticipating what would come next.”
Popa couldn’t understand why the group was flying to Jacksonville, which was just a 70-mile drive from St. Simons, except that it gave the three men more time with their families on this sleepy Sunday afternoon.
“We had a very nice Sunday.”
Chip Worthington flew for Glynco TAJ Aviation when he wasn’t working for a local holding company. He would often take his wife, Marilyn, on joyride flights. On this Sunday, he took her for a flight in the morning to view the real estate projects the holding company was working on.
“They had a new subdivision,” she told Fields. “He had a flight earlier that day. We rode around, had lunch. He came back home, and made sausage cheese-ball appetizers, and put those in the freezer for later on. We had a very nice Sunday.”
Worthington had one more flight to make that day—flying the three instructors from Sea Island to Jacksonville. From Jacksonville, the trio would catch Piedmont Airlines flight 1535 to Tampa, leaving at 9:30 pm.
Love had flown with Worthington several times and was happy to see the pilot when he arrived on the tarmac at the small airport. But the group of instructors was dismayed that a smaller plane had been dispatched, and there wasn’t any room for their golf clubs. The plane dispatched was a four-seat, single-engine Piper Cherokee Archer, registered with the tail number N8342L and referred to as “Four Two Lima” on radio transmissions.
“When Davis got into the plane, he did something odd,” Penta Love later recalled for Davis III’s 1997 memoir, Every Shot I Take. “Although he had already kissed me goodbye, he came out of the plane, walked to the car, and kissed me goodbye again.”
Love was not the only passenger on board who was leery of flying on the small plane.
“It’s kind of creepy to look back on now, but he was fearful of dying in a plane crash,” Cheryl Popa, John Popa’s wife, said. “When they left here, though, it was crystal-clear on St. Simons. I had friends who had flown with Worthington, and they said they would fly anywhere with him because he was such a careful guy, a careful pilot.”
“Attention all aircraft; tower visibility on half mile.”
Worthington checked the weather in Jacksonville before taking off and filed VFR (visual flight rules). Hodges was in the seat next to Worthington with Love and Popa seated behind them as the plane took off at 8:23 pm. Worthington contacted the tower at Jacksonville at 8:31.
“We’re landing on runway seven, the weather is sky partially obscured, visibility one mile, fog, wind calm, altimeter is three zero one eight,” the approach controller in the tower, Ronald Singletary, informed Worthington.
Singletary updated the weather six minutes later, at 8:37.
“Attention all aircraft; tower visibility one half mile.”
At 8:39, Singletary was informed by a local controller, Steven Stump, to be ready for missed approaches because “it’s getting really bad.”
“The plane had fallen off the radar.”
Singletary advised Worthington at 8:39 to “continue your present heading, you’re cleared to JAX International via radar vectors, maintain two thousand, expect ILS (instrument landing system) approach for runway seven.” At 8:48, the Piper Cherokee was cleared to land. Again, there were warnings from the tower about other flights missing their approaches, and an American Airlines flight that had just landed informed the tower that they broke out of the fog right at the minimum altitude. Worthington acknowledged the warnings and told the tower that they were a mile and a half out and were at about 800 feet altitude.
There would be no more transmissions from Worthington.
It was now around 10 pm in Maui, and Davis Love III, called home to check on their daughter. Love knew something was wrong the moment his mom answered the phone.
“The plane had fallen off the radar,” his mother said.
Filled with foreboding and dread, the Loves caught a plane for the six-hour flight to San Francisco.
By early Monday morning, authorities detected a signal from the lost plane, and Marilyn Worthington knew this meant the worst. At 7:30, the fog cleared, revealing the wreckage of the Piper Cherokee and the debris field that was located 1,400 feet left of runway seven, and 500 feet past the start of the runway. A later investigation revealed that the plane’s flaps were fully retracted and the throttle fully open when it struck trees 40 feet above the ground at 8:53 pm.
Davis and Robin Love arrived in San Francisco and used a pay phone to call home for the latest news. Mark, Davis’s brother, confirmed the bad news that all on board had perished.
Nusbaum, the director of the Golf Digest School, was informed about the tragedy upon waking at Innisbrook, where the annual meeting was being held. He headed immediately for Sea Island bearing a weight of guilt.
“It was hard on everybody because they were coming to a meeting that we were all there for.” Nusbaum told Fields. “I remember, for a while, feeling, ‘Gee, this was a meeting that I called.’ I had been talking to Davis a lot on the phone, making sure he was coming. You think, ‘My god, did we need to do this?’ ”
Services were held on Wednesday, November 16th, on Sea Island, and they were staggered so that mourners could attend each. The tiny church where Hodges’ service was conducted could not contain the crowd, and mourners spilled out onto the lawn and sidewalk.
The Love family made a point of being gracious towards the Worthington family and were among those who paid their respects at Chip’s service.
“They never held Chip responsible for the crash,” Ed Worthington, Chip’s brother said. “They went out of their way to be kind to Chip’s wife and my family, and we appreciated that very much.”
“The details or the blame — to me — really didn’t matter,” Davis III says now. “I’ve always moved forward, to keep me focused and sane and help everybody else get over it.”
His graceful approach had the calming effect that Davis III was striving for, but for the community of Sea Island, the shattering of that quiet Sunday in November of 1988, and the memory of John Popa, Jimmy Hodges, and Davis Love, Jr., would not be forgotten.
WHAT HOLE IS IT?
Congratulations to Al Wrzesien, for winning the WHAT HOLE IS IT? contest last week. Al beat out four other correct answers of #5 at the Mid Ocean Club in St. George’s, Bermuda, in the random drawing. Al will receive a $10 discount code in the Tour Backspin Golf Shop. Check out The Tour Backspin Golf Shop HERE.
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Bonus Story
Davis Love, Jr., The Teacher
Davis Love, Jr., learned golf instruction at the knee of Harvey Penick, his coach at the University of Texas in the 1950s. Penick passed on a common sense approach that leaned heavily on his ability to inform, rather than inundate.
Love had a 13-year affiliation with Golf Digest and wrote 35 stories for the magazine, was featured in two instructional videos and was co-author, along with Bob Toski and Bob Carney of the book, How to Feel a Real Golf Swing. He became a force in the Golf Digest School, where he worked closely with Toski, and while Toski admired his ability as a golf instructor, he knew there was something more critical to Love.
“Davis’ greatness was his family,” Toski told Don Wade of Golf Digest for an “in memoriam” article that ran in the January 1989 issue. “He was able to be both a teacher and a father to Mark and young Davis, and that’s rare, beautiful, and remarkable. He taught them both golf and life.”
“He just wanted what was best for me, my brother Mark, and all his pupils.”
Of course, his most famous pupil was his son Davis Love, III.
“Everything Dad did or thought about golf, he shared with me, and that made such a difference,” Love III told Wade. “Dad never wanted publicity or credit for himself. He liked the teachers whom he respected to work with me. In fact, just before he left for Jacksonville, he told my mother he thought I should go see Peter Kostis for some help. He just wanted what was best for me, my brother Mark, and all his pupils. I’d just like Dad to be remembered for all the people he helped—the good players, the not-so-good players, and all the young teachers like Tom Ness, and Jimmy Hoges. Dad taught Jimmy like Harvey taught him.”
Davis Love, Jr., was a good enough player to put a score after his name on some of golf’s most famous leaderboards, but it was his ability to instruct that brought him fame and respect.
Tour Backspin Quiz | Sea Island Trivia
Who brought the new Cloister Hotel a huge wave of publicity when he stayed there during a Christmas vacation in 1928?
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Clips I Loved
This is brutal.
What do you think this did to Paige Spiranac’s reputation? How about her authenticity? The crying and “I didn’t know you couldn’t do that?” She’s competed at some high levels, after all. I’ll have more to say in the Final Thoughts (below the paywall).
The wind was crazy on Bermuda on Sunday.
More Clips I Loved below the paywall.
Tour Backspin Quiz Answer:
President Calvin Coolidge provided the brand new Cloister Hotel in Sea Pines, GA a ton of publicity when he spent his Christmas holiday at the hotel.
Blind Shot
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bunkered.co.uk. details five players who are playing for their cards this weekend.
R.I.P. Augusta Hooter’s. Greg Gottfried of Golf Digest has the sad details.
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Final Thoughts
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